ROADTRIP NATION PRESENTS

Everyone seems to have a voice in the immigration debate—except immigrants, themselves. Hear immigrants tell their stories in their own words, on their own terms—and for the first time.

Explore the immigrant experience through the eyes of Alexis, Rachel, and Pratishtha: three undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country at a young age, and have been temporarily granted partial—but not full—protection against deportation. Determined to clarify their futures despite their murky status, they set out to talk to fellow immigrants who’ve found success, learning that lines on a map don’t make you who you are. It's not where you're born, but where you go in life, that defines you.

FUELED BY:

INSIGHTS FROM THE FILM

“I didn't want to live in fear; I wanted to put myself out there. I wanted to be seen so that, eventually, I could be heard.”

Diane Guerrero, Actress, Orange is the New Black

“Don't use being undocumented as a crutch. You are so much more than just ‘undocumented.’”

Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist/Activist

“If I wasn’t going to achieve my dreams, it wasn’t going to be because I didn’t try.”

Julissa Arce, Author, My (Underground) American Dream

CATCH IT ON TV

Enter your zip code to find this program on your local public television station.

FEATURED INTERVIEWS

Jose Antonio VargasPulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist/Activist

Diane GuerreroActress, Orange Is The New Black

Julissa ArceAuthor, My (Underground) American Dream

Mabel ArellanesClerk, New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender

Michael SpaldingFounder, Equal Chance for Education

Julieta GaribayFounding Board Member, United We Dream

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THE ROADTRIPPERS

RACHEL

PRATISHTHA

ALEXIS

RACHEL, 23

To see the turn Rachel’s life might have taken, she only has to look as far as her own family. With hope of legal status dwindling, Rachel’s parents decided that she and her brother should return to South Korea—their birthplace, but a place utterly foreign to them. Weeks after her brother left, and days before she was set to go, President Obama announced DACA. Rachel was able to stay, but hasn’t seen her brother since—a constant reminder of how close she came to missing out on the life she knows. Caught in between the Americanness she feels so deeply, and reminders that she’s not quite, she wants to reclaim her identity as an immigrant and learn about the experiences of others like her.

PRATISHTHA, 25

“We shouldn’t be invisible,” Pratishtha says. “We’re human beings.” Her father lived in the U.S. for 15 years, but after he died there was no record of him ever existing at all. That’s why her rebellion against the system has been to make herself visible. She was one of the first in line in her state to file a DACA case; first at her community college to earn her AA as an undocumented student. And when colleges weren’t immigrant-friendly, her family moved across the country so she could earn her B.A. Now she’s studying for the MCAT. She wants to continue to make stories like hers visible, and to show others like her a way forward.

ALEXIS, 23

Brought here from Mexicali at age 5, Alexis is driven by the knowledge that he has a chance many all over the world wish for. When American factories took over his family’s border town, gutting the local economy, his mother made the decision to come to the U.S.—access to education was the only way out for her son. But for Alexis, the loneliness of living in the shadows, and the anxiety and the fear, weighs on him—never knowing if everything he’s built will be taken away with the next election, or if he happens to get on the wrong bus one day. Torn between two worlds, and not fully part of either, Alexis wants to find a community that he can wholly relate to.